


Eighty-Five Things the Doctor Learned About Being Human (the Why We Listmake Remix)

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He asks questions and gets answers, in this world just as in the other. And he learns, this Doctor does. He learns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eighty-Five Things the Doctor Learned About Being Human (the Why We Listmake Remix)

It has been a year since Bad Wolf Bay, and what the Doctor has learned is a simple and troubling truth:

As foolhardy as human beings can be with their bodies, they are utterly careful with what they carry inside. 

"Well, there are insurance policies for limbs and life," Rose mutters pragmatically when he shares this musing with her, one early morning in the thick of what's shaping up to be an unusually warm London summer. 

Her hand, slim and quick and clever, smoothes its way across the surface of his belly, and his abdominal muscles quiver, something tugging low to meet the warmth of her touch.

"Hearts have no such luck," Rose adds quietly, and her path comes to a stop with all the finality of a punctuation mark. 

The Doctor picks up her hand in his own, idly tracing the complex network of veins that spider across and under her translucent skin. He turns over her hand, following the intricate, intertwined lines of Head and Fate. If her palm was a map, he thinks that he could chart every traverseable road. He knows her hand like he knows how to breathe. 

But then, things that are burned into flesh don't change, do they? It's people themselves that change. Hearts and feelings. Impossible to know, impossible to give freely.

Twelve months since he first landed on a windy beach, the universe around him so foreign and final, and all he knows for sure is that there are some walls that can't be torn down.

(He asked, in the first two days of their new life together, whether she cared for him the same way she cared for him back when he wasn't split in two. She answered by twining her fingers through his, but the things she couldn't or wouldn't say lingered in the back of his own throat, waiting to be uttered by _one_ of them. 

He whispered "I love you," on that beach, and she never said a word.)

The Doctor asks lightly now, protected by the encroaching sunlight and some instrinsic carelessness, "Insurance policies for limbs and life, hmm? Protection for the armor. Not for what's lies beneath?" 

Rose's pulse beats steadily under his touch, a rhythmic stirring of her blood, unique to her own circulatory system, a cadence that for as long as the Doctor lives will always sound to him like Cybermen marching on Doomsday.

He continues, "Nothing to guarantee that everything in here--" He brings her palm to his chest, the outline of her fingers twitching slightly over the steady _tha-thump, tha-thump_ , "--is safe forever?"

Rose chuckles, a throaty noise that is equal parts tender and sad. "Silly man," she breathes, leaning closer so that her nose skims the vulnerable slope of his throat. "Aren't you the one who says there's no guarantee of anything? That nothing is forever?"

"Then there's no harm in taking a chance, if there's nothing to lose." There is an edge to his words, a bite of frustration, a neediness to understand. "Why is it so difficult for you--for _us_ , for humans, to just...open ourselves to new things?" His voice drops. "Things that have changed."

Rose opens her eyes more fully, her lashes brushing against his jaw, the brown of her irises bright in the reflection of a luminous dawn. 

"I never said there was nothing to lose," she corrects affectionately, and her fingers slide up the valley of his chest, moving along his throat, curving to fit against his jaw. "And I, for one, am very open to things that have changed." 

He doesn't ask, _Are you?_ but she hears it anyway, and so she turns his face down to hers. Her lips fit softly over his own, and the Doctor registers the fleeting taste of something sweet.

Cherry lip-balm for the drier climate of this world; another little adjustment. There are always little adjustments to be made, in this London. 

The Doctor sighs when the kiss ends, and they lay awake but apart for an hour at least before getting up and starting their day.

Together but separate. The sun burns on, and the Doctor keeps thinking this thought.

::

It is several days later when Rose tries to explain what she is beginning to think is rather unexplainable to someone like the Doctor: the immutability of human fear, when it comes to their hearts and the defenses they build around themselves.

Cuddled up against his side, the morning sun a little higher in the sky, the room more gold than grey, she touches her fingers to his lips and searches for her words.

"It's just that sometimes," she says, her mouth warm against his cheek, "We gamble our lives more than we gamble our bodies because, humans, we can mend a sprained wrist. But, Doctor, what can we do when someone hurts the souls in us?"

Her voice is faraway, and she isn't speaking strictly of him, but of the part of him that twice vanished from the beach where she laid her heart bare. The original copy, with two hearts and without the added benefit of human selfishness. The brave one, who let a girl named Rose Tyler go. The stupid one, who left a girl named Rose Tyler behind.

"You can write a letter calling him an A-level idiot," the Doctor suggests, and his collar smells like a combination of her perfume and the sandlewood soap he's taken to using when washing up. The mix is heady, because it's something like _home_. 

Rose blushes; violent heat blooms under her skin. "You found that, yeah?" she asks, and her fingers move farther along his jaw into his hair, burrowing in the thick mass at his nape, squeezing a gentle apology. 

"Yep," he admits. "I never knew there were so many words for 'stupid,' to be frank."

She laughs, this time more than a mere breath, a sound rich with amusement. "And you, a genius," she says with mock surprise, her eyebrows raised.

"Oh, I'm very disappointed in myself." 

He means it to be clever, she can tell, but somehow, the gravity of truth weighs his words down, makes the room heavy and hot.

Because she is disappointed in him, too. In his twin self, his alternate self in the other world, flying through space and time on the wings of his own martyrdom, alone only because he made it and makes it so. Will always make it so. What else is there to be, but disappointed?

(Grateful, perhaps. But Rose has learned that it's hard to think of gratitude when there’s so much loss to ponder instead.)

“Don't be,” she whispers, touches his mouth with the tip of her finger, the sweep of his bottom lip with the pad of her thumb. "Don't be disappointed, I mean. We do things we think are right sometimes, even if they're not. We do things because we mean well, and that's enough for me, Doctor. That you mean well."

In the end, they have seen so much madness and sadness already, the two of them, and Rose misses the way she used to have such limitless, stubborn faith in him. She needs to believe like that again, needs to look at someone with planets spinning revolutions in her eyes, galaxies moving slowly through her laugh. She needs to want something so badly that she would tear down world after world with only a very big gun just to get it once more.

So Rose leans in and kisses the Doctor, tries her best to erase the self-doubt in his eyes and her own heart the only way she knows how.

Her mouth moves over his in a language even the TARDIS could not decipher; ancient and abiding, the language of souls. Words as old as time, and when she closes her eyes, they're outlined in gold.

In moments like this, she sees the two of them on a hill overlooking New New York, applegrass smelling sweet and warm wind sending their hair flying around their faces in a happy rush. In moments like this, Rose remembers the way she smiled at him then, the wide open exuberance of her face. She wants to smile that way again, and the desire comes in an unending wave, constricting her chest, making her toes curl in the sheets as she kisses him, as their mouths move hungrily, almost desperately even though the the air is still and the day is still young.

He asks no more questions of her, but Rose knows that when they finally do get out of bed, he still does not understand.

::

She says it like she means to tease, another morning after. Her eyes are creased with a smile, and her tongue pokes between her teeth.

"Not to worry, Doctor," she hums, and the duvet is tangled between their feet as she turns to face him. "We're all a bit dim when it comes to people we--"

Her voice breaks off. Involuntarily, she shifts in bed again, a half-smile the only concession to the last, lost half of her sentence. 

In the turn of her shoulder, the Doctor sees the sudden cage of her body falling over the tender reaches of her heart. Her back is curved, her knees tucked to her chest, and her elbows are peaks, sharp and accusatory as she folds into herself. There are times when she is the living image of her name, petal-soft and open to the world, pink and supple and full of brilliant, thriving life.

But lately, there are also times when she is closed off like a wall of thorns, prickly and defensive, an unbreachable fortress. Beautiful but cold, at the depth of her. 

“I love you,” the Doctor blurts in a rush, and it’s the first time he has said it since the waves crashed to shore, water gushing over sand and seeping through his shoes, the ocean breeze stinging the insides of his nose. Rose has been stone once before, and it was his love that brought her back to herself then, loose-limbed and animate amidst the ruins of ancient Rome.

Perhaps it could still be as easy as all that, days and days after he first asked the question of _why_ it is so hard for people to let themselves go.

"Rose," he says her name like it is redemption, because he understands that humans are at their most wonderful, at their most wild, when they risk it all. "I love you."

The repetition makes Rose tense, the slim arch of her neck visible beneath the slice of hair that falls over her shoulder. There is a tattoo, a relatively new event, at the base of her nape: the name Bad Wolf, small and dark, irreversible. When he had asked, she had told the Doctor that the words were "a reminder, on the really horrible days," and her joking had been weary in a way that made him kiss the tattoo, pressing his lips reverently to each letter, the trail that would forever lead her home. To him.

Now he looks at the tattoo and wonders how Rose can offer her body so willingly to such soul-rending marks, a loving confession spelled out on a canvas of flesh, when the words spoken aloud are still too difficult for her to take.

"I love you, too," Rose finally answers. The words scrape almost reluctantly from her throat, and are so awkwardly uttered that the Doctor winces. "'Course I do."

Her back is still a forbidding, closed door, freckles scattered indiscriminately in the pattern of old stars (he has named four constellations on one shoulder-blade alone) and the sinuous ridge of her spine is just barely visible under her pale, translucent skin. She is unspeakably beautiful from all sides, all angles, but the Doctor misses the vibrance of her face, the mobility of her features, the utter humanity steeped in her every expression.

"Rose," he says her name again, "Turn around, please."

She does, heaving a sigh that is more of a time turner than any TARDIS. In the sigh, the irritable, affectionate, frightened sigh, he can hear a nineteen year-old Rose Tyler, with her big hair and dark brows, spidery lashes and blowsy mum, a girl with a heart as big as the Titanic and a future just as doomed. He loved her the instant he met her, amidst the shells of plastic men, a warm and living human with honey in her voice and daring in her eyes.

He loves her now, still, always. His heart breaks with how much he loves her. And the boundaries he has always constructed for himself, the ancient walls built up by ancient lords, they're all crumbled to dust. Everything to dust, in the end. 

The thought galvanizes the Doctor like never before.

"Come here," he whispers, and the infinite patience of immortality is finally gone from his soul. Life is too short, too fleeting to tiptoe around a minefield of memories. 

Rose turns, and there is something dark and sweet and anticipatory under the glimmer of surprise that slips over her face. Her mouth moves as if to say something, but because words have lost their power for the first time in a long time (and for a Time Lord, a long time is a very long time, indeed) the Doctor leans in and seals her lips with his own.

They kiss, and the clouds begin to gather in the sky.

::

The rain is coming down in earnest now.

The dry summer heat is dispelled in favor of this spring-like storm, and as the buckets pour down, Rose burrows further in the duvet, her arms curling around the Doctor's neck like a tendril of vines. The window next to the bed is open far enough for fat raindrops to splatter against the battered, wooden sill, and the smell of rich, damp earth filters into the bedroom in gusty, rich bursts. 

She kisses him, and tastes rain.

And salt, too, like the sea that swirled at their feet as they stood together on a cold, windy day, watching the sun set on an empty beach. He tastes like salt but he feels like fire, the skin beneath her questing hands warming until it's blazing hot, the slick of his tongue sending a drizzle of heat burning down her spine. 

"I love you," the Doctor repeats, his voice hoarse. Rose's eyelashes flutter involuntarily as his hand travels up her side, skimming underneath her silky camisole top, thumb pressing against the underside of her breast. "I love you so very, very much." 

There's a thread of desperation that makes his words sound almost like a plea, and perhaps that is what causes Rose to tip her head back and breathe in deeply, baring her neck in a gesture of implicit surrender.

The Doctor leans closer, his hand still cradling the warm weight of her breast, and he licks a long, clean line along her pulse. Her throat works under his mouth, and her fingers reach up to sift through his hair, curving into his nape. They move slowly, purposefully, though the undercurrent of urgency makes Rose hitch her leg high up on his waist, nestling closer, grinding slowly against him as he strings kisses along the pinkened skin of her collarbone.

He rolls her over so that she is perched on top of him, and for a moment, sitting with her knees on either side of his hips, rubbing intimately against the hard length of him, she feels like she's looking down from far above. Outside of herself.

The Doctor's gaze narrows, and in an instant, Rose is herself again, as his hands travel up her stomach, warm palms against the quivering muscles of her belly. Her arms stay hovering in the air for a moment after he tugs the lacy scrap of camisole up and over her head. She is sticky with sweat, and the drag of his hands against her back is excrutiatingly gentle.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, so quietly it's to herself. "I'm so, so sorry--"

He stops her words with a sharp tug of her waist, bringing her down, falling in degrees until her trembling arms are bracketed on either side of his head, keeping her hovering over him. His mouth closes over a breast, and she arches with a sharp cry, his tongue hot and slick against her tight nipple, his hands carding through her loose, messy hair.

"'M trying to show you instead of telling you, because anyone can say the words but sometimes words don't mean a bloody thing, and I--"

His hands slide under her baggy pyjama bottoms, fingers ghosting over the gooseflesh and pressing intimately against her. She gasps, bites off her words, lips parting in a swollen 'O' as he rubs firm circles against her. A jolt thunders down her thighs to the tips of her toes, and her fists clench in the bedsheets.

The Doctor watches her as if it's a challenge, his mouth hanging slightly open, his eyes wide and dark. There is something sorrowful in the depths of his gaze, something old and young at the same time, and Rose just wants him to listen to what she is saying:

"I love you, too," she gasps, and there's something unlocking deep inside, some piece of the puzzle that is snapping in place. "I _love_ you, from the minute you blew up Henrik's to the minute you blew up that Dalek ship...love you, Doctor, love you, love you, love--"

"God," he hisses, and his fingers speed up, sweat beading at his temples, eyebrow furrowing in concentration, "God," he says again, brokenly. "Rose."

And then she closes her eyes and it's just silvers and blacks, the rain outside beating in time with her pulse, the thunder a grind that rumbles down low. And his voice, and her name. Just that, as the heat expands within her, and she flies, flies, flies. 

Lets go.

::

As a scientist, the Doctor compiles lists. He observes and he records, puts down little bullet-points in the shape of his favorite constellation. Catalogues and describes, analyzes and improves. His whole life--both the other, 900 and plus, and this one, however long it will be--is all about lists. All about taking down everything he sees and everything he learns so he can keep on doing that very thing.

But there are lists he never though he'd be allowed to make. Things the Doctor never thought he'd have the opportunity to learn--

The curves of Rose Tyler's body, the birthmark on her left hip, and this: the way she looks when she is finally, truly, loving him.

She moves around him, silken and hot, and in the push and pull of her body against his, he finally understands the whys and wherefores of human carnality. The way something deep and unfathomable can be expressed through something as simple as this joining of two people in a messy, damp bed in alternate London.

"Rose Tyler," he breathes, and it is an apology.

"Doctor," she responds, and it is an absolution.

There is a past that lies behind them, littered with the armor that they've accumulated and worn over their tender hearts. But there is also a future that lies before them, free and unencumbered by what-ifs and maybe's and all the uncertainty that clouds even the best and bravest of minds.

Rose looks at him with eyes that are no longer a child's, and the Doctor touches her cheek with a hand that is no longer invulnerable. For a moment, they are just one couple out of billions on this one world in a universe teeming with the unknown.

And then the moment breaks, and they are who they always were: adventurers, warriors, the stuff of legends. In this world, and the last.

Hours later, the sun slices through the clouds. Light streaks in through the window, and the Doctor and Rose sleep on.

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted from LiveJournal. A remix of [Eighty-Five Things the Doctor Learned About Being Human](http://ladychi.livejournal.com/118621.html) by LadyChi.


End file.
